By Howie Edelson
On July 13th, 1964, Capitol Records released All Summer Long – The Beach Boys’ sixth album in only 22 months. Most famously, the LP, produced by Brian Wilson, contained the band’s first Number One single – the massive two-week chart-topper “I Get Around” and featured seven other collaborations between Wilson and his cousin and frontman, Mike Love. All Summer Long hit the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart on August 15th, entering at Number Seven before peaking at Number Four for a solid month. All told, it stayed in the Billboard Top 10 for 16 weeks. Amazingly, the week it fell out of the Top 10, the band’s sole Number One album of the 1960’s – Beach Boys Concert – kicked off its month-long reign on top of the Billboard 200.
Over the decades, All Summer Long has been considered not only the greatest concept album about California youth – but a global calling card for American life. The group captured their times perfectly with a collection steeped in hope, promise, and real excitement. The Beach Boys were standing tall as the British Invasion flooded the U.S. airwaves and could pride themselves as being among America’s most innovative songwriters and progressive record makers. Barring their labelmates, The Beatles, no other self-contained British Invasion group was writing and recording tighter ensemble rock than The Beach Boys in 1964.
What All Summer Long shows is a band not bowing to the new sounds from across the Atlantic -- but building on American music emanating from the East Coast by the likes of The Four Seasons and reinventing doo-wop by way of Harthorne Boulevard (and just left of heaven.) For the most part, All Summer Long highlighted all of The Beach Boys’ strengths. The Beatles seemed as though they were dropped on our shores from outer space – but The Beach Boys lived right down your block. There was (and is) a definite difference and both bands served an entirely different purpose musically and culturally. They remain a perfect complement to the other.
"I Get Around," a tune publicly endorsed by Mick Jagger -- backed with “Don’t Worry Baby” from that year’s previous album, Shut Down Volume 2 -- was released on May 11th, 1964. That July 4th, “America’s Band” knocked Peter & Gordon's John Lennon and Paul McCartney-written "World Without Love" from Number One, going on to hold the top spot for two weeks. It was the first of four Number One singles the group eventually scored alongside "Help Me, Rhonda" (1965), "Good Vibrations" (1966), and "Kokomo" (1988).
Over the years, many fans have taken notice that there were so many missed opportunities for Capitol to pull hit singles off All Summer Long, with no better proof than "Little Honda," which was a solid Top 10 hit later that year for The Hondells. The album’s title track would’ve made for the ultimate end of summer classic that it eventually became a decade later when brilliantly featured in the end credits of George Lucas’ 1973 coming of age favorite, American Graffiti.
Other highlights on All Summer Long include the band’s final surfing song of the “striped shirts” era – “Don’t Back Down”; a Carl Wilson guitar work-out on “Carl’s Big Chance”; the Wilson/Love beauty “Girls On The Beach” – featuring a sandpapery Dennis Wilson cameo that undoubtedly made countless hearts beat faster; as well as “Drive-In” utilizing a backing track by L.A.’s top session men; alongside an incredible cover of the Doc Pomus/Mort Shuman-written gem, “Hushabye,” which not only, arguably, betters The Mystics’ original 1959 version – but would have absolutely had strong legs on the singles charts at the time. All Summer Long features the last Brian Wilson/Gary Usher team-up in the band’s cannon, “We’ll Run Away.” Its 12/8-time signature and angst-ridden lovelorn lyrics describing a couple planning to elope would soon give way to the romantic maturations that would be celebrated in The Beach Boys’ 1966 materpiece, Pet Sounds.
On September 21st, 1964, Capitol plucked fours songs from All Summer Long to serve as the group’s sole American EP – Four By The Beach Boys, featuring “Wendy” and “Don’t Back Down” backed by “Little Honda” and “Hushabye.” Due to their appearance, two of the tracks found their way onto the Billboard Hot 100 with “Wendy” hitting Number 44 after garnering extra exposure during the band’s September 27th, 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show -- and “Little Honda” topping out at Number 65.
Brian Wilson remembered the genesis of The Beach Boys’ first chart-topper and global smash, “I Get Around” – a tune also performed on the group’s Ed Sullivan Show debut: “1964 seemed like more than one year. We played more than 100 shows, all over the world, and recorded all or parts of four albums. We had our first Number One hit with ‘I Get Around.’ That year, it was Beatlemania and it was Motown-mania, but it was also Beach Boys-mania. We were one of the biggest things going. For ‘I Get Around,’ Carl suggested we use two guitars. We wanted to achieve a commercial guitar sound and a commercial melody for Mike to sing. There wasn’t a process as such, there was just a recording studio and The Beach Boys. The hardest part was when we dubbed it down, mixing the guitars and pianos and voices all together.”
Lyricist Mike Love took the lead on the track and recalled hearing his cousin’s latest musical ideas for the first time: “In April (1964), Brian invited us to his office on 9000 Sunset in Hollywood and played us some new tracks, which revealed how much he was progressing as a composer. He employed unusual chord progressions to create ‘fake modulations,’ which is when you think a song is moving into a different key but it stays in the same key. Brian also combined chords that do not occur naturally in the same key, which was rarely done in pop music, yet they fit together beautifully. ‘I Get Around’ was an unbelievable arrangement; the song jumped out of the radio. Brian was developing musically and ‘I Get Around’ was a transitional record that took us from ‘Little Deuce Coupe’ and ‘Shut Down’ to something more like Pet Sounds and ‘Good Vibrations.’”
Brian went on to add, “All Summer Long was a turning point in understanding how to write for the band. There was a real maturing of our sound on that record. There’s a start-stop cadence on ‘I Get Around’ with a driving bass. Nobody had done a record like that before. There’s a great instrumental break on the title song, all these subtle shifts that then feed back into a stellar group harmony. Up to this point we had milked every idea dry. We had done every possible angle about surfing and then we did the car routine. But we needed to grow artistically.”
Mike explained that even as early as 1964, change was the only constant in The Beach Boys’ sound: “Brian didn’t make a song like ‘I Get Around’ again. He’d always change the tempo, the lead singer, the arrangement, the type of song, because his mind is so diverse in the way he interprets his environment. One song would be a slow song, one would be real happy, one would be real melancholy. I think that’s because of Brian’s nature. The kind of music would lead us, and then I would come along and try to complement what he was feeling musically with some concepts and words. Even at the height of Beatlemania, we still had ‘I Get Around’ as a Number One record. That song backed by ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ is one of the best singles ever released.”
Al Jardine told us that ultimately, both then and now, the Beach Boys' biggest hits have always served a larger purpose than just filling space on an album: “Each song, or each track selection, is a special little messenger. And they convey a certain optimism, I think. And collectively, they're extremely powerful and it reminds of a better time -- a more positive time of growing up and experiencing things as a culture.”
Future-Mod Squad actress Peggy Lipton spent time with The Beatles during their L.A. stop on their 1964 summer tour and shed light on the “Fab Four’s” love of The Beach Boys, telling Teen Set at the time, “Paul (McCartney) and I found two empty seats by the record player and began talking to the sound of a Beach Boys album. . . Paul and John (Lennon) are infatuated with the Beach Boy sound. They played All Summer Long all night long and asked me many questions about them. Paul and John were fascinated by Brian’s style of composing and arranging.”
Carl Wilson spoke many times on the paradox of juxtaposing basic, yet universal, subjects on top of highly evolved and intricately composed sound: “The music on the face of it is very simple and there was a time when people thought it was a little silly. However, musically speaking, a lot of it is quite deep and complex. I mean, it was about going to the beach and having a car and the American experience, but a lot of the songs are master works.”
Back in 1976, a dozen years after the release of All Summer Long, Dennis Wilson spoke lovingly about his older brother Brian and his remarkable musical gifts: “He is a master, musically. I am dumbfounded at him. I am in awe of him. I’ve grown up with him and watched him go through changes, and he is the most vulnerable human being I know. The depth of that guy. . . I mean, he changed the world with his influence. When Brian plays something for us, we just gape. It gets very emotional.”
Six decades after the release of All Summer Long, we’re still talking about this album, still listening to the songs. During a summer long ago when everything from Great Britain was all the rage – The Beach Boys stood apart. There was still plenty of room in millions of hearts for music about “making real good bread,” throwing on a ragged sweatshirt, and facing down whatever “big wave” was standing in your way. These songs reflect a simpler time – but also a timeless simplicity.
Here's to The Beach Boys’ joyous sounds surrounding you All Summer Long ‘24. Throw on your tee-shirts, cut-off’s, and a pair of thongs. (Be careful of spilling those Cokes. . .)
Have a happy summer!!!
Listen to The Beach Boys!!!!!!